In an effort to provide an equitable registration experience for all incoming NTC First-year students, the Registrar’s Office uses the following procedure to allocate seats during first-year Registration throughout the month of June.
Procedure
- The day before first-year registration events begin, all 1000, 2000 course sections, and those 3000 course sections identified by Academic Advising as needed by first-semester students, are adjusted to have maximum enrollment equal to their current enrollment. This effectively closes the sections to non-first-year students. Waitlisting is also disabled for these courses, although active waitlists are left in place.
- A calculation is then run on each section to determine the number of seats available between the current maximum and the projected maximum enrollment. (The projected max is the enrollment cap set by the department and is the basis for room assignments).
- Each morning during first-year registration, the Registrar allocates a percentage of the available seats for each section based on the number of advising appointments for the day.
- This process continues until the projected max enrollment set by the department is reached. The projected max is never exceeded without permission from the department.
- After all first-year registration events have concluded, each section’s maximum enrollment is reset to match the projected max. This releases any remaining seats.
Example
- ENLS‐2030‐01 is set to a projected max of 30 by the department.
- The day before first-year registration events begin, there are 4 students in the course, so the Registrar lowers the current max to 4 while leaving the projected max at 30. This means that there are 26 seats available to be allocated during first-year registration.
- One the first day of first-year registration, 9% of incoming First-year have their initial Advising appointments. We calculate 9% of the 26 available seats, which is 2.34. Two seats are then added to the current max, bringing it now to 6. This allows two students to add the section that day. Fractions greater than .5 are rounded up.
- This procedure is followed each day during first-year registration using the percentage of incoming students with Advising appointments that day.
- At the end of first-year registration, the section will have been raised to a current max of 28 but only 26 students enrolled. The current max would then be raised to 30 to match the projected max set by the department. The remaining 4 seats are now open to anyone.
FAQ
What about waitlists?
While students cannot add themselves to waitlists during the first-year registration period, students already on waitlists will not be affected. Any seat that opens during first-year registration will be offered to waitlisted students first according to normal waitlist procedures before becoming available to any incoming student.
Will the cap set by the department be honored?
YES! The Registrar will not exceed the projected enrollment cap set by the department without permission from the department and confirmation of available classroom space.
Why is this necessary?
In order to give all students equitable opportunity to register for popular courses, we must allocate seats across all registration dates in the month of June, rather than on a first‐come‐first served basis. Otherwise, popular courses would fill early in June, and students with registration appointments at the end of the month would have fewer choices in their scheduling.
